Previously I’ve written about translation quality in the visual novel translation community, and the fact that peer review is an important part of the process of building something like a web of trust dealing with quality and reputation. However, we all sort of talk about ‘quality’ in vague terms on personal scales.

So, taking some ideas out of talks with zalas at encubed in #denpa, I’ve sketched out a possible way of at least talking about this topic on a common scale, a Z-scale so-to-speak, that sets some minimal criteria for talking about translation quality.

For today, wander along with me on a thought experiment and ask, what kind of world would it be if translators weren’t invisible. A world where we give them more attention than they seem to get now. What kind of world would it be?

There is a chicken and egg problem when it comes to translations. Those who are capable of judging the quality of a work, are also the ones who don’t have any particular need for the translation. Meanwhile, the people who must rely on a translation, are also the ones least able to decide whether a translation is good or not. Is there any way that we can close this gap of knowledge?

The argument, machine translation (babelfish/google translate/ATLAS-II), good, bad, or indifferent, has raged in the fan translation community for ages and ages with the same arguments about quality, editing, etc. coming up. What I don’t see is a look at how these systems actually work and making judgments on that. So for my contribution to this debate, I’ve gone and tried to expose the inner workings of such systems.

I’ve been wanting to write about the actual translation process, and translation in general, for a while now. The problem was that the topic was too huge, even if you know you’ll be writing a series of articles about the topic, where do you start?

One thing that soon came to mind that bridges what us translators of visual novels experience, and what the more general public experiences: Why is it that people seem to think translation is easy?

Keeping a project team together is hard work, especially when everyone is scattered all over and never see each other in person. Technology makes it possible. However, there are good tools to use, and bad tools. Today, I was introduced to a horrible tool, ROME, and well, I just had to explain why it’s horrible before some poor sap winds up using it and destroying their project.

When a series builds to too many articles, it’s time to bind them together into one place. Here’s the ongoing series on the management side of building a visual novel translation project, looking at roles, teams, recruiting, workflow, and more.

Continuing the series on visual novel translation projects. It’s finally time to look at the detailed process that goes on in a project. Just exactly what goes on in the “Translating” and “Editing” phases anyways?

Continuing with the ongoing series on how to start and manage a translation project, this article takes a look into the most basic of basic project management techniques, the simple Gantt chart and Critical Path analysis. No math, no textbooks required, just pencil and paper.

Part 4 in the ongoing series, this time looking at an activity we all know about, recruiting staff. It’s specifically targeted at visual novel translation teams, but it should be general enough to apply to most projects without changing.